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Memory And Strolls

If you read travel notes by simple tourists or people on journalistic, cultural or political assignments, from the 1920s or 30s, if you peruse recurrent images about a Bucharest imprinted with evil or good charms, equally decrypted and encoded, moving and repulsive, you

Three Controversial Books

What is one supposed to understand by image and to what extent should one take it to heart? Physiologically, the image is the consciousness one is left with about an absent object. It is, therefore, the opposite of perception, i. e. representation of a present object. In

Voyage To Southern Russia And Crimea, Through Hungary, Wallachia And Moldavia (Paris, 1837)

excerpts Chapter III: BUCHAREST-WALLACHIA (…) My advice to the fatigued traveler who arrives in Bucharest is to pay his first visit to the excellent Turkish baths which we were to try ourselves soon. These establishments, mostly situated in the quarter by the Dâmboviţa

Romanian Profile

excerpts In the first half of the XVIIth century, there appeared a new combination of imported styles which has been characterized as the first Wallachian manifestation. The prototype of this style is the village church of Gherghiţa in Prahova county. A later example of

Once ...

The Cries of BucharestCities have their own special humming. Church bells, tram noises, horses, sergeants' whistles, car horns (banned in Bucharest), dogs barking, army trumpets, and so on, and so on – all combined, heard from a distance, forming a characteristic

At The Fair

Yellow and blue streetcars, princely coaches, churlish carts and bikes and a lot of folks on foot…From so many streets and ways, like on as many arms of a huge river waves upon waves of people are flowing as if into a boisterous sea, unto the barrier at the end of the

The Bucharest Of Former Times

Volume I, 1871 - 1884 The Christmas of 1871? My young age then was so eagerly waiting for it. By 10 o'clock the night of the Eve, the shrill voices of the carolers would resound all over Bucharest. In those days the carolers were children from the edge of town, children

The Mogoşoaia Bridge

excerptsThe Beginnings With the passage of time the ancient road was called by sundry names: lane, bridge, promenade – as if it needed any name or title, this street of streets whose reign over the city goes back two hundred years. Victory Promenade! The Nation's

The Bucharest Inns

excerpts In the second half of the 17th century, inns emerged in Bucharest. They later formed a very important chapter in the Bucharest economy of the 17th century and of the first half of the 18th century, and they made an important contribution to the development of the

Laugh To The Left

In the visual arts, the laugh, the ridicule and caricature have a certain regime, which is rather different from the one developed in literature, mainly because it is an expression of criticism and contempt much more immediate and politically engaged. Starting in Germany

Who Needs No Theater

I get up one morning and, you know me, I take Gazetta dello Sport, to see how goes Il calcio after the Bosman sentence, which represents such a situation that you can't even begin to understand what will happen to this much cherished game. And lo and behold, what do

100 Years At The Gates Of The Orient

excerpts Episode no. 33At the Vizier[1] Meanwhile, not long after the crescent had entered a Christian cloud, much to the heathens' grief, three men's shadows on three horses' shadows were more like crawling than riding towards the vizier's palace.